Dieter Mammel, Justin Wijers
paintings, drawings
21 February – 14 March 2010
The paintings of Dieter Mammel (1965) from the series Privacy show direct, often intimate images of naked and vulnerable people expressing their emotions. Through his painting technique, with ink running fancifully on moistened canvas, the image gets blurred, creating a necessary distance to the subject. Apart from strong emotions, he also paints mysterious and tranquil images, such as an intensely burning fire or a swimming boy seen from a viewpoint under water. This painting Under Deep Water refers to the film of the same name recently completed by Dieter Mammel. A boy is diving into the water, meets all kinds of fantasy creatures there and afterwards comes to the surface as an adult man in the Bosporus in Istanbul. Under Deep Water will be premiered in Istanbul and Hagen, Germany, on the occasion of Istanbul European Cultural Capital 2010 and Ruhr 2010.
Justin Wijers (1981) draws victims of violence and traffic accidents he finds on the Internet. With a fine jellyroller pen he depicts the battered bodies in thin, precise lines. As the bodies are only partly coloured in and their contours are very lightly sketched on the white surface of the paper, at first sight they look like abstract areas of colour or islands on a map in a white sea. On the body and in the stains around it Justin Wijers has written texts and drawn flowers, plants, animals and pictograms in bright colours, which almost make a psychedelic impression. With much feeling and thought for detail, he fills in the bodies, as a tender last homage. The observer first loses himself in the beautiful colours and the many details, until the total form of the body emerges. In this way Justin Wijers confronts us with the raw reality we are faced with in the media every day, but from which we normally seclude ourselves.